Slender Man stabbing victim says defendant obsessed

Defense attorneys for Slendeman stabbing suspect Anissa Weier are working to convince the jury the girl was delusional and believed in the fictional character when she and a friend stabbed a classmate in 2014.

It was Slender Man that authorities say motivated the two sixth-grade classmates to stab Payton Leutner 19 times in a Waukesha park.

After nearly three more hours the jury emerged with the verdict which, per Weier's plea agreement means she will be placed in a mental institution until at least 2020, WDJT reported.

One of the girl's former classmates, who was also interested in Slender Man, told the court she had discovered how to become the character's servant - by killing a friend. According to the claim, she was mentally sick at the time of stab attack and she was not responsible for stabbing her classmate.

All three of them were aged 12 at the time.

Anissa Weier trembled as the jury's verdict was read after a week of testimony and some 11 hours of deliberations.

Weier told authorities that she and Geyser believed they had to kill Leutner or else Slender Man would kill them and their families. McMahon also said that a judge can order up to a 25-year commitment for Weier. With Geyser, Weier developed a "delusional belief system" and together they made a plan to kill Leutner and become Slender Man's proxies, Smith said.

While Weier was dealing with her parents' divorce, teachers began noticing symptoms of depression, he said.

Waukesha County Assistant District Attorney Kevin Osborne told jurors that Weier went along with the attack to preserve her one and only friendship with Geyser. If the jury had found her guilty, she could have gone to prison for 10 years.

Mr Van Rybroek said as a result Weier "couldn't stop herself at the moment it mattered most", and helped stab Miss Leutner even though she knew it was wrong.

A detective who interviewed Leutner testified in the Waukesha County courtroom that Geyser had been scaring her beforehand with stories about characters from a horror website.

Both Weier and Geyser were originally charged with being a party to attempted first-degree intentional homicide. Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree homicide due to mental illness as part of a plea agreement in August.